Abstract
Research on frames in climate change (CC) news coverage has advanced substantially over the past decade, but the emerging understanding of the framing role of visual imagery that often accompanies news texts remains fragmented. We report on a set of image frames identified through content analysis of 350 images associated with 200 news articles from 11 US newspaper and magazine sources from 1969 through late 2009. We reliably identified and quantified the occurrence of 118 image themes. We then hierarchically clustered the themes based on their co-occurrence in images to identify an integrated framework of 42 image frames. We highlight frames associated with particular types of images (e.g., photographs and maps) or geographic regions. From among the full set of frames, we identify 15 that commonly appear in US CC news imagery and discuss the ways in which image frames make salient (or render invisible) particular categories of people, geographic regions, aspects of science, and spheres of activity.
Highlights
Scholars in various disciplines have called for more research on climate change (CC) visuals
After reviewing previous work demonstrating the influence of imagery on cognition and media communication and describing textual and visual framing of CC in news media, we present the results of a content analysis of climate-themed US print news imagery
We propose a set of dominant image frames that regularly appear in US-based print news media
Summary
Public action 3 protest/demonstration political action including non-political figures public/alternative transportation
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